


The Last Place You'd Look - The DVD Extra

by theorclair



Series: The Last Place You'd Look [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:26:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3534542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theorclair/pseuds/theorclair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything you ever wanted to know about the making of The Last Place You'd Look.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Since to reprint the whole story for this I'd have to use a whole lot of space, I'm just going to begin with general commentary on a chapter and quote the relevant bits as I come to them. Obviously there will be spoilers for future chapters in various parts, so don' t read this without having read the whole story first. Ask me anything you want to know in the comments!

Abuse is one of those topics that everyone and their cousin likes to mine for angst, especially sexual abuse, but it's not often done well. Almost everyone is aware of the problem of magical healing sex, and I think people write it with good intentions, but having one good sexual experience isn't going to suddenly blot out the bad ones. Some of the problems I see in other fics aren't as recognized. Very few stories make a point of mentioning that children - and even adults - have mixed feelings towards an abuser, and most stories include anger and self-blame, but not anything positive. I'm not sure how much of this I conciously thought of when I started the story, but I was very aware that I wanted to touch on various unpleasant apsects that don't show up in a lot of stories.

When the prompt on the kink meme struck me, I decided to stay anon at first. I wasn't sure if I'd complete the story at all or even get past a few parts, so I felt that if I did that there'd be less expectation.

The title of the story comes from a book about missing people in the USA, The Last Place You'd Look, by Carole Moore. It seemed to depict the uncertainty in a lot of child abuse cases very well.

Before I came up with anything but the title, I decided the abuser was going to be a woman. Just a lone woman, abusing children because she was sexually attracted to them, no one else forcing her. It almost never happens in these kinds of stories. To the Sherlock fandom's credit, they've actually dealt with it a few times, so points to that. I also decided that Sherlock would have been abused by a woman as well, and he'd be the only one to not assume the serial child abuser was male. Until the big reveal in chapter seventeen, I kept going back to re-read sections to make sure Sherlock was the only one who never referred to the abuser by gendered pronouns (not counting the children). Even some of the commentators would refer to K as "him," which I expected people would do.

 **"John Watson was... 'It's a bit different.'"** The easiest way I could figure out to get Sherlock aware of the case was by John being aware of an abuse victim in the hospital. I invented several other details that never made it into the story, such as how the girl refused to say anything at all to the various social workers, police, and trained interviewers, so they go to a doctor the Yard is familiar with as a last-ditch thing. Obviously not standard protocol, but everything else I thought of was even less plausible.

 **"Last night there was an admission... no one's hurt her."** I picked a girl as the first victim because frankly physical signs of abuse would be much easier to notice and not be handwaved away as caused by something else. If Sarah hadn't chatted with Phillip a bit she'd have never gotten his vague statement in the first place.

 **"John left the clinic and headed up to the wards above."** So the roller coaster begins.


	2. Chapter 2

The one thing I have the most trouble with in writing is, weirdly enough, naming characters. I once came up with a background for a character that was longer than the entire story he was in, and I still couldn't think of a name for him. If I'm not inspired, I'll use an initial or symbol for the character until I come up with a suitable one. Obviously this couldn't be done in this story, so when I tried to think of an easy way to get names, a thought occured to me. The story's named after a book about missing people, right? So why not name the original characters, or at least the victims, after missing children in the UK and Ireland? I did, and it worked very well in the end. Some of the victims are very similiar looking to the child they're named for, and some are not. Whenever we meet a new character, I'll list and link to the inspirations for their name/appearance.

Moira Aherne is physically modeled after [Mary Boyle](http://www.doenetwork.org/cases-int/1460dfirl.html). Mary Boyle is blond, but Moira is strawberry blond (and her father has reddish-brown hair) because of their last name, taken from [Ruairi Aherne](http://www.doenetwork.org/cases-int/704dmirl.html). Moira is both a variation on Mary and the name of another missing child, [Moira Anderson](http://www.doenetwork.org/cases-int/865dfuk.html). Her father is named after my own, and is loosely based on my own father. His back story of being in foster care because of his alcoholic mother is also taken from real life. My maternal grandfather with the same name grew up under identical circumstances. Nora Aherne is not based on my mother at all, because it seemed a bit auspicious to name a dead mother figure after my own alive one. Her back story was created to make sure the family didn't have any relatives to be ruled out as the abuser. Her siblings aren't named after anyone; I just picked them at random. Like Mary Boyle, Moira is a twin. I didn't know when I started the story what type of twin Mary is (I learned later on she is an identical twin), so I flipped some coins and got her brother. Their relationship is based on my own relationship with my twin, and many other relationships between twins I have known. Unlike most of the families and parents in this story, the Ahernes are functional, warm, loving, and happy. When Sherlock says later in the story that this was K's big mistake, he's correct.

**"To John’s surprise... 'Maybe she really doesn’t know.'"** This is the first indication of the type of family the Ahernes are, since few of the parents we later meet would be sitting vigil in their child's hospital room. I also wanted to show the behavior that lead to the Yard ruling him out as a suspect. He wants to believe that his daughter really doesn't know the person who abused her, because then he doesn't have to worry that she's _choosing_ to let the person continue to roam the streets. He's reasonably terrified of this person, although not in the same way Moira is.

**"The girl in the room was sitting on the bed... 'What’s your bear’s name?'"** Brownie is my real bear, although he was my aunt's and not my mother's.  He is ancient and like Harry I have requested to be buried with him. He's provided me with a lot of comfort, both as a child and an adult, and I liked giving Moira that safety. We're both twin bookworms who are close to our fathers, but that's where the resemblence ends, in case you are wondering.

**“'No. I’d just like to talk to you...' when she grinned it stayed on her face."** John gets further than anyone else for two reasons - he's male (there really is a policy in many police departments that women interview sexually abused children, which I've thought might be just the wrong thing in some situations) and he tries to talk for a bit about non-related topics. The other inverviewers, including Donovan, went straight to the point because they wanted to find the abuser sooner rather than later, which was well-intentioned but not the right thing to do. The picture of Moira's family I put there knowing it would later come up and why. I knew at that point K had seen her in the hospital by using some old identification to get in, and that this made her clam up even more. I also knew Rory the dog was going to be important in some heroics later one. (Rory is one of Ruairi Aherne's nicknames, but he's really named after the Who character. As you can tell, Moira loves all things science fiction.)

**“'Do you know why you’re in hospital...' he gently said and left the room."** John is of course no Sherlock and isn't going to figure out the right things, but no one is.

**"John fell into step with them and asked... it’s not the working theory.'"** Family always has to be ruled out in these cases, so I made a point to mention it. Only one of the other victims is taken to a hospital because a parent noticed something wrong, and with a lot of them there wouldn't be a person.

**“If you’re all so stuck why don’t you just –“** The Yard is of course ignorant about Sherlock's history, as is everyone but Mycroft, K, and Victor Trevor, so they are reasonably imagining this ending in tears. Even John thinks that it would be a potential disaster, but he's focused on finding the person first. And this is where we start seeing people assume by pronoun.

**It seemed like a very long ride.** I have read a lot of books about medicine, and most doctors will freely admit that child abuse is something that they never get used to. John is reasonably quite haunted by this.


	3. Chapter 3

I knew even before beginning this story that Sherlock's past was mostly going to be revealed by others.  He wasn't going to say much about it himself except in a few unguarded moments. And he was probably going to go to pieces over it. His way of dealing with what happened to him was essentially "shove it into the farthest corners of his brain and not think about it unless he needed it."  (And yes, for a variety of reasons he needed to think about it at times.) By the end of this chapter, or at least by the end of the fourth, John knows what happened to him.  Obviously not in a factual sense, but he has figured out that he suffered some form of sexual abuse. And he doesn't know what to do with that information.

**"After a minute or so... the nearest chair."**   I liked using this little bit to show a more "normal" Sherlock, the one that wasn't going to be in the story much. (Cow organs are commonly dissected in high school biology classes, so that's probably how Molly got them.)

**"'It had to be something big...' molesting a child definitely wasn’t."**   Originally this bit included Moira's name, but I deleted it because most doctors want to keep patient information confidential.  John is still very shaken by this; he needs to talk to someone about it.  He doesn't know it will open up a can of worms.

**"'Why did they want...' 'all those cases.'"** Sherlock knows at this point he is going to get involved in the case, even if he has to sneak around.  His brief glee isn't from a case or even from thinking of outsmarting the Yard - it's only about the idea of finding this person and putting them in jail.

**"'How long does this...' he's got a real hold on all of them.'"** The part where John assumes. Sherlock notices this and right away starts to think that the problem isn't the hold on them (although there must be a big one) but that everyone else is assuming.  I'll also note here that although fifteen different victims are eventually named in the trial, only three of those are part of the original thirty that started the case.  No one else was able to come forward out of them, and a bunch of different people did. The real number is probably close to hundreds.  Out of them, there's probably three or four long term victims at any given time, those groomed and trained like Sherlock and Phillip.

**"'Will she still be in hospital...' 'if you cross that line.'"** Originally John was going to refuse, and Sherlock was going to just sneak overe there. However, I felt that would just make the Yard tell him to stay away and thus backfire, so I had John relent.

**Sherlock was the one who broke the silence, surprisingly enough, saying, “People always assume.”** This line is the lynchpin of the story. And he's right.  Even Mycroft assumed.


	4. Chapter 4

As I said in the previous chapter, originally I was simply going to have Sherlock show up at the hospital. John would wake up, find out he wasn't there, and race over to the hospital and Moira's room. That didn't seem to work right, so I just had him give in.

**"John Watson was usually a good sleeper... what would happen tomorrow."**   John's both concerned with how Moira will react to Sherlock and to her situation in general. At this point he of course doesn't know that Moira is actually one of K's more fortunate victims, and since she was physically injured as a result of the abuse, it creates especially vivid images for him, that he doesn't want to deal with. And a very small part of him has already figured out why Sherlock is so determined to get on the case.

**"Sherlock, if he had been by himself... '...he’d like to talk to Moira.'"** One commenter correctly guessed that the book Mr. Aherne is reading to his kids is _George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt_ , by Lucy and Stephen Hawking. And yes, there really is a Hitchhiker's joke in the book. All of the description there is to drive in the Aherne family is a good one, warm and loving. Sherlock gets this right away, and knows that will make his job very much easier. He's still angry, but the personal aspect of the case doesn't overwhelm him until he meets Phillip. Right now he's still able to be a bit distant.

**“I suppose I’ll have to leave the room again...' walked out of the room into the hall."** This bit is all Sherlock needs to rule out Mr. Aherne as the abuser, for all the reasons he details later. This doesn't make things easier - in fact, he now knows it's going to be harder.  If he had been the abuser, he might have been able to get a confession, but since he is not there's clearly a greater threat over Moira's head than the loss of love from her father. At this point he knows that he shouldn't even allude to the abuse at all and just get to know her.

**“Is he your friend?”** Moira trusts John a very little bit, so a friend of his is someone she feels slightly more comfortable with. She's also trying to make sure Sherlock isn't an ally of K.

**"Sherlock then came to sit in the chair... care for pets.'"** Since Rory is in a family picture, Sherlock correctly guesses he is considered a part of the family, and is the easiest member to bring up to break the ice.

**"'Is it because you live in a flat... 'Did he bring you to the hospital?'"** A final confirmation that Mr. Aherne is not neglectful or emotionally absent, like the parents of so many of the victims we meet. Sherlock also wants to see how Moira reacts to a direct mention of her being in the hospital without mentioning why.

**“'He brought you your bear? ...closer to where he was sitting."** Here Sherlock confirms that Moira asked for the photo of her family, and gets a good idea of why.

**“Has anyone else come to visit you?”** He doesn't expect a truthful answer here at all; he's just asking to see how she reacts, which of course confirms that she's not telling the truth. If you're wondering how K got into the hospital in the first place, she still has her old ID badge. When she goes into the clinic later and runs into Sarah, she's also trying to get in the hospital to see if she can find any other records of the other victims. The new job doesn't exist. As a side note, she never cared much for Sarah because Sarah's suspicions, as small as they were, showed up. K knows perfectly well that anyone who isn't charmed by her needs to be regarded with suspicion. She doesn't think she's doing anything wrong (more on that in later parts) but she does know that other people think it's wrong.

**“He’s worried about you.”** While this is true, Sherlock said it to bring her mind away from what he just asked.

**“I know he’s worried... recalling a fond memory."** Part of the reason he's smiling here is that Moira is starting to trust him.

**“And your mother died?”** Sherlock knows this because from everything he's already seen of the Aherne family he knows that if they were merely divorced, at the very least Mr. Aherne would bring a seperate picture of her mother. Moira doesn't ask for one because she can't be used as a threat. Her reference to her mother having "a break in her lung" is a confusion of the fact a blood clot broke off and settled in her lung; since Moira was only six she didn't quite understand what happened.

**“'Your dad is all your family?... 'They were both in care.'”** Sherlock wants to know if there are other family members who might be threatened, and in the process discovers a more disturbing one.

**"Will you come back?”** Moira is somewhat aware of the fact Sherlock is supposed to ask her about the abuse, but the fact he didn't directly bring it up at all makes him the least threatening of all the people who have questioned her. She also wants to tell someone as long as she can figure out a way that her family won't be in danger from it.

**“'Was any of that useful?'... 'a very helpful conversation.'”** Once again Sherlock is noticing that John assumes. Everyone does, of course, but he now knows that most of the investigators are probably assuming too and this is the reason they aren't getting anywhere.

**All John could think was that he hoped this would not be considered his fault.** Sherlock's long monologue before this is very deliberately gender-neutral, in hopes of breaking John out of his assumptions. Lestrade is surprised to see him there, but is also relieved in a way - no one else is getting anywhere and maybe Sherlock can break the case. Like almost everyone else, he's very disturbed that the abuser has gotten away with it for so long and is willing to do anything to stop them.


	5. Chapter 5

I knew that the sooner the Yard found out about what Sherlock was doing, the better, so I made sure someone found out the same day. I chose Lestrade because sending anyone else seemed likely to end in a snipe-fest.

 **"Lestrade. Good to see you... nothing of the sort occurred."** Lestrade here is honestly relieved that he doesn't have to go through the trial of deciding whether to ask Sherlock to assist on the case. He knew it would help, but also was worried about how the children would feel about it. Moira's made his decision easy.

 **Have you come to question the child again and in the process get various forms of denial and stonewalling? That's all you'll ever get, by the way."** It should be obvious why Sherlock says this - he would do the same thing. He has no idea the abuser is the same as his, but he can remember those feelings all too well. So he's willing to go very slowly in his investigation.

 **The meal was not exactly torture... as fast as they could manage.** This is the beginning of Lestrade's awkwardness with Sherlock. Some of it at first is from fear the investigation will go badly, but as the story progresses it's from what he finds out.  Lestrade thinks he's intruded on Sherlock's privacy to know what he learns, even unintetionally, so he begins to avoid talking to him directly.

 **When Lestrade knocked on the door of the room... they're for the record."** In contrast to how Lestrade deals with Sherlock, he can be more direct with Mr. Aherne. This is both because he doesn't know him as well and because he connects to him on a primal level, as they're both fathers.

 **"Now, in your own words, tell me... she said she didn't know and she wanted to go home."** Since it's been a few days, Mr. Aherne can recount the events of that evening with some objectivity. He really didn't think of some sort of injury until he was almost at the hospital because he simply can't fathom someone seeing his nine year old daughter in a sexual way. Moira's been physically hurt on a few previous occasions, but not to the severity she was then. Some of her panic in the hospital is a fear that K's going to be there and hurt her again (most of the victims who were taken to the hospital for one reason or another feared this, which I tried to show in the story) and some is terror that K will assume she's told and murder her father.  K of course isn't going to murder him, despite her threats, because she knows perfectly well the threat is enough.  If she really needed to she'd have killed Rory, but this was never needed. Incidentally, this convinced most of the staff that her father hadn't done it for reasons Sherlock elaborates on - she wants him there for security and knows he won't hurt her. 

**"Has she been spending a lot of time with you recently?"** With this and a few of the other questions Sherlock asks, he already knows the answer, but if he asks them they will be part of the record.

 **"A bumblebee?... "It got taken away," he tersely replied.** Sherlock doesn't know the bee was burnt since Mycroft didn't tell him, and I think that knowledge would just make him feel worse. His feelings towards Mycroft are mixed - he knows intellectually that his brother couldn't have prevented the abuse, but he blames him for letting it go on anyway. And as is the case with Victor Trevor, he also blames him for the end of the abuse. Sherlock's feelings towards K are profoundly screwed up, and he's both afraid of her and thinks she's the only one who ever loved him, and she stopped because he did something wrong. Like grow older.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Busy, no other excuse.

This chapter is one of the most important, even though it's short, because it introduces Phillip to the reader. Phillip was specifically designed to be a parallel character to Sherlock - someone who he knew exactly what he was going through. Phillip is both modeled after and named for [Phillip Cairns](http://www.internationalmissingchild.org/find-child/poster/IRGSmk5). His last name, Rodgers, comes from yet another missing child, from the UK, [John Rodgers](http://www.internationalmissingchild.org/find-child/detail/UK9821051961/1).

" **Sherlock had spent most of yesterday... ...let him sit and mope.** " Of course at this point the reader knows exactly why he's doing this, but John doesn't.  John's not stupid and he could easily put it together at this point, but he can't make himself. As the next chapter shows, he finds it too horrible to consider.

 **"'He’s actually the child who started our investigation... ...one of a hundred here.'”** A hundred is probably not an exaggeration. K's pattern of abuse involves children at any clinic she's worked at (ones that are vunerable for various reasons), children like Moira who are vunerable at some point and are abused for a year or two but left more delicately than the longer term ones, strange children who are vunerable in some way (often drugged to forget it) and children she pays  (or pays their parents) for sex, and the victims like Phillip and Sherlock who are abused for many years and groomed carefully. Those are meant to feel special and unique, but there's usually four or so at one time (she makes sure they never meet). Usually she loses interest once the child finishes puberty. Her plan is to insult and abuse the child at that point so much that the child is made to think she no longer wants them as a friend for something they have done. In some cases she's been impressed enough by their desperate need to have her in their lives she has been willing to take them on longer.  Phillip and Sherlock both fit in here.

 **"'Father is out of the picture, whether he’s dead or just left isn’t known.'"** While this was part of the previous bit, I decided to address it separately. I did not actually plan for Phillip's father to be in the story at all for a while - in my original idea he never showed up and Phillip was taken out of his mother's home by Mycroft getting him into a good boarding school. Phillip's one big difference from Sherlock is that he truly has no one at home to care about him and is both more vunerable to K because of that and at the same time more willing to talk about what's going on then Sherlock because he's got no one to talk to.  Every time I thought about this I kept going back to that if that was the case Phillip would still be as vunerable to predators as he was before. Bringing in his father later came up as a solution, but that took more writing.

 **“He loves his abuser... ...isn’t too off the mark.”** Sherlock is talking about himself here as well as Phillip, although I didn't think that would be obvious to readers at that point.

 **“The Yard’s attention... got her back eventually.”** I knew that the child mentioned was Jennifer and that the doctor that thought her father had done it was also going to come up later, for a variety of reasons.

 **“I was telling horrible lies.” The statement sounded rehearsed.** Of course it's rehearsed - he's repeated it in his head for years even though his mother only said it a few times before she died.

 **“I should have known better.”** Almost all of K's threats to a relative's well-being were directed at Mycroft, but the idea that someone would be hurt or die if he said anything weighs heavily on him. He knows intellectually by now K couldn't have caused his mother to have a stroke, but he heard it at a young age and this has never left him. It's emotional reasoning.

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

This chapter is really a short bridge towards the rest of the story. I knew Sarah was going to be part of the story, but I didn't know to what extent. Having her be the doctor who examined Phillip at first was my way of doing so, but the more I planned out the story I realized how much she could be used as a character. Even though she doesn't have a big role on the show, I find her character interesting and wanted to explore it.

 **"I also want to get a good look... I'm sure he is," he said quietly."** One of the things I felt the need to balance in the story was Sherlock's personal feelings in regards to the case in contrast with his more detached crime-solving nature. This is probably most present in the trial scene with him, but this is where the contrast starts. If he thinks of it as "just another case" he can work more effectively, but at the same time the victims (especially Phillip) stir a lot of emotion that he can't brush away. It's sort of a form of disassociation, but since I don't use that term often in the story he can seem almost chameleon-like.

 **"They didn't speak any more that night, but when John got up in the middle of the night to get himself a drink, he could see Sherlock sitting by the window, staring out over the city. John didn't ask what he was doing or what he was thinking, because he was starting to realize there was a great deal he didn't know about Sherlock. He was so angry and determined about this case. He seemed to know exactly what to say to Moira and what she felt. This was creating a disturbing picture, but he only had vague remarks to go with. And he wasn't sure if he wanted to find out about more of it."** Don't be fooled by his questioning; John knows perfectly well that Sherlock is reacting ths way to the case for a reason, and he is sure what it is. But he knows that Sherlock won't talk about it (and even later in the story he doesn't share a lot to John) and until Sherlock talks to Moira he can't bring himself to ask Mycroft. (Mycroft's role in the story is small mostly because he has never been able to deal with not protecting his brother even if he intellectually knows there was nothing he could have done, but that's going to be touched on more later.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other notes, there should be updates to both No Final Solution and The Ball I Threw While Playing in the Park soon.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you following No Final Solution: it is on hiatus until I finish The Ball I Threw. My apologies. I will finish it.

This is the first chapter that I had to be careful of pronouns. Since the victim is going to be talking about the perpetrator directly, I re-read everything twice so I could make sure I always used something gender-neutral. For those wondering, K's real name - Kelly Martin - was picked because I wanted a gender neutral first name; not just something that was able to be used as a gender-neutral name, like Kimberly or Ashley, but that is still used more or less equally for all genders. "Martin" is just a common last name that isn't Smith or Jones. Her middle name "Gene" is a bit misleading since that spelling is usually used for men, but I happen to know a real female Gene who runs into this all the time. Since that ties into one of the story's central themes, I decided it fit. And I'm not sure calling her K all the time is the best thing in this meta, but like John I couldn't make myself think of her as anything else.

_**Mr. Aherne opened the door... '...while you talk to her.."** _ I liked being able to write this little bit of domesticity before the storm.

_**John knew he wasn't supposed to make his presence known, but he couldn't resist looking into Moira's room.**_ I also liked writing about Moira's room. _ **  
**_

The next bit was hard to write for a variety of reasons, one of course being that since only Sherlock and Moira are in the room John can't see anything that happens.  Since he is also the point of view character, (and in this story, for mostly dramatic effect, there are no Sherlock perspectives), I had to write a whole scene based on what someone would hear. I think I did all right, but those sorts of things are tricky for anyone.

_**"Oh, a Cadbury bar! Is this all for me?" Moira sounded delighted. John was still stunned. Sherlock never bought food on his own, and he knew there weren't any Cadbury bars in their flat. Had he really done that just for this interview?**_ Yes, John, he did. He knows just how Moira feels and thinks it would help put her at ease. He's right.

**"See, this is the page with the bee. It's got a picture they took with a microscope."** The idea for this as an icebreaker is of course based on the ACD canon that Sherlock Holmes retires and keeps bees, but this specific picture I got the idea from the hilarious story by [AtlinMerrick](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/pseuds/AtlinMerrick), [Minutiae (Or 156 Things I Know About You)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/441850), where John gets him a bee picture taken with an electron microscope. Moira, who is a small science nerd already, would think that sort of thing was just great.

**"That's sad. I'm sorry." He heard a cry of surprise. "Don't you like hugs?"**

**"Not very much, no."** Moira, despite her current difficulties, has had a much more loving/ordinary upbringing than Sherlock ever did, and being able to show non-sexual affection towards others is one sign of that. Sherlock, of course, associates all touch with sexual contact.

**"Were you telling horrible lies?" John was surprised by the question; he hadn't even thought to ask something so basic.** Most people wouldn't. Kids are the ones who ask the questions that no one else wants to ask because they haven't learned to mind their own business yet.

**"Because of what you told her?" There was a note of terror in her voice.**

**"No. It would have happened anyway."** Sherlock sounded like he didn't quite believe that. Once again, of course he thinks that, thanks to the wonder of emotional reasoning.

**"Did someone say that they would adopt you if he died?"** "He" here is Mr. Aherne.K hasn't out and out said that, but she has mentioned she has fostered and hinted she could look after Moira if "something happened" to her father. 

**"How about I make a deal with you. You can tell me more about this person, but don't tell me their name or what they look like. That way, if they ask you if you've told anyone about them, you can still say no."**   Unlike Phillip (I'll get to him when he is introduced) Moira doesn't gender K because of her fear of being found out.

**"At the park. I took Rory for a walk and I met someone. We talked a bit. I said we'd moved. Said to me I must be lonely."**   K's mistake.  She most certainly was, but not from a long-standing home situation.

**"They asked you a question?" Silence, probably filled with another nod. "What did they ask you?"**    This part is where it starts to get more descriptive. Throughout writing the story, I struggled with the writing of the actual abuse.  I couldn't very well gloss it over, because that would take away the horror, but I didn't want to be accused of overly focusing on the details.  I also knew very well if I wasn't at least somewhat explicit, some acts of abuse would fly over people's heads.

**"If I was a boy or a girl...' '...Let me check,'" she whispered."**   In the next chapter John mentions this makes him feel uncomfortable even thinking about it, and writing it wasn't much better. I think if Moira had been in a better position here - not so broken up about a move and the anniversary of her mother's death - she'd have at least yelled, but all that made her frozen in shock.

**If I came back there'd be a surprise."** This is grooming, plain and simple. K didn't have any interest in dogs any more than drawing or insects. In all those cases she just figured out the things the child liked and learned about them as well as got various items that would interest said child.

**Sherlock was the one who broke the long silence. "You're a very brave girl, Moira. Thank you for telling me all this."**   Sherlock has a very odd but understandable disconnect between his past situation and the children he is dealing with now - he knows they are not to blame for anything, but still thinks he is.

**"Okay. And you won't tell K – " The first letter apparently slipped out, but the rest of the name was cut off.**   Moira knows K's name and profession, and has been to her set-up flat, but little else. She's too afraid still to reveal any of this, with somewhat good reason. However, if she felt safe she would reveal more. Phillip would not.

**"Mycroft – we need to talk. JH."**   John can't keep his head in the sand any longer. He already knows what Mycroft will say, pretty much, but still needs to hear it. (The end of the text, with an H instead of a W, was a typo of mine. Since my post on the meme was still anon then, I couldn't fix it, but made a joke about it in the next chapter. Although I personally think if anyone changed their last name on marriage, it would be Sherlock.)


End file.
